


To be touched by death when you have already died

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: 6 Underground (2019)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Codenames, Developing Friendships, Gen, Introspection, Loss of Identity, Post-Canon, Team as Family, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:33:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25842130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Six was dead, and Billy didn't even know his name.
Relationships: Four | Billy & Six (6 Underground)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	To be touched by death when you have already died

Three days after Six had died, One gathered them on a boat in the middle of the ocean.

He had broken into the coroner's office in Florence before the government, at the urgent behest of the Mafia, could examine the body, One told them with little emotion as he opened the boot of the little, run-down car with the broken window that he had stolen from the side of the road to reveal the bodybag. He'd carried the body through the darkened streets of Florence and charted a boat so they could bury him like a Ghost. Whatever that meant. 

Billy watched as Three joined One in lifting the body- Six's body, he reminded himself- out from where it was cramped into the boot and to the waiting boat. Billy would have helped, but he found himself unable to move, frozen on the footpath beside Five. They didn't ask for his help, so it was probably for the best that he didn't get involved.

He felt too exposed on the boat, yet trapped as well. Stuck on the little patch of metal afloat in the middle of the ocean, bobbing on the waves. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, nowhere to run if things went wrong.

For most of the trip out to the middle of the sea, he sat on the deck with his arms wrapped around his legs curled up against his chest. He was meters from where Six's cold, stiff body laid, wrapped in black plastic and still sticky with his own blood. He was so close that he could reach out and touch him. Not that he wanted to. He wanted to remember the Six that was warm and alive. Touching the body hidden in thick plastic would just break the illusion that maybe it wasn't Six's body unmoving on the deck and was just some poor stranger who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Six was dead, and Billy didn't even know his name.

They weren't too close. How could they be, when they only knew each other in terms of numbers, from one to six. But Billy had liked him. He was funny and energetic and witty, always needing some form of entertainment, and he and Billy had bonded over their mutual love for _speed_ , of wind whipping across their skin and their hair flying off their faces as the landscape disappeared and changed all around them, the thrilling danger of now knowing what came next, what you would find around that next corner, if you would make that next leap.

The two of them had spent many hours together in one of Six's favourite cars with the sunroof down as they speed through the streets with Six and his capable hands behind the wheel as they screamed and cheered their delight into the sky before the sound was swallowed by the breeze.

But all Billy had of Six now were memories, and the sight of his constantly jittering body stilled against his chair, his constant stream of jokes finally silenced, his body slick with his own, warm wet blood.

That, and the final sight of the body bag that contained his friend being dumped unceremoniously into the ocean. Billy felt like someone should say something, that _he_ should say something, but they didn't even know his name.

The body bag was gone within seconds, swallowed by the hungry waves, and he didn't even get a chance to accumulate some semblance of a goodbye. All he could do was watch hopelessly as One tossed the body overboard, and then that was the end of that.

"What do we do now?" someone asked into the prolonged silence.

"We find a Seven."

When One deposited them on the nearest port before taking off and leaving them behind to go find a Seven. Billy trudged away from the dock with his single measly bag slung over his shoulder, dragging his feet on the wood. Three came over and wrapped his arms around Billy's shoulders and crushed him to his side. "Chin up, kid," Three tried to sound jovial and carefree, but there was a tightness to his jaw, a hardness to his eyes, something haunted and sad. While his lips were smiling, his eyes said something different. "One will be back soon and with a new guy, too. Our numbers will be back to normal in no time."

Three was one of the kindest and most empathetic members of the Ghosts, at least from what Billy's seen so far, but he was also a little bit crazed and ruthless when the time called for it. He wasn't sure what shocked him more- that Three's worries only included their smaller numbers and not their dead teammate or that Billy himself couldn't find ay real, logical reason why anything else would matter.

"Yeah, well, do me a favour?" Billy asked, and Three hummed in question. "If I die, throw my body out of a plane or something. I hate the fucking ocean."

A deep laugh shook Billy to his core as Three threw his head back with the strength of his laughter. "You are a very funny guy, Four," he said affectionately as he reached up and ruffled Billy's hair before he was gone, hurrying to where Two was waiting to rent a car. 

Four. That was his name now, not Billy. Four, the skywalker, the sticky-fingered thief, the kleptomaniac, the loudmouth, the cocky one, the nobody before being a nobody, the expendable one, the thrill seeker. Billy was dead. All that remained was Four. He had to remind himself sometimes. It just didn't feel right, didn't feel real. He wasn't sure if it ever would. There were a lot of things like that lately.

Billy was dead and in his place stood a man that wore his face and mimicked his smile, but Four had been given more of a life than Billy ever had. SIx was dead too, but unlike Billy, Four didn't know his name.

He hadn't expected to like Seven as much as he did. It was too soon after Six. Despite the new number, it still felt like they were trying to replace him, to move on from his death as though he never existed. It made no sense to Billy. How could you just move on and forget like that? But for the team... for the team, he could try.

Hong Kong, and Four nearly met the same fate as Six, the same fate as Billy, but Seven somehow managed to convince One to stop the car n the middle of a high-speed chase so Billy could limp, wounded and ashamed, into the backseat.

He thought for sure that he would be kicked off the team for putting the mission and the Ghosts in jeopardy, for getting the shit kicked out of him when he should have been fighting back, for being weak and needing back up, for forcing them to break the most important rule and go back for him- 

But then Seven became Blaine. Five became Amelia. Two became Camille. Three became Javier. Four was Billy again. It felt more like freedom than the numbers ever did.

If only Six were alive to feel it.

It was as if everything changed since then. There was a new certainty within the group, a new sense of teamwork and kinship and comradery, security, confidence now that they wouldn't be left behind to die, left behind to suffer, left behind to find their own way back and possibly dying from their wounds. It was as if by learning each other's names, they had unlocked something new, a new kind teamwork they had never felt before. Like their names had set them free and gave them the chance to be the family they always should have been,

One thought that he was saving them and untethering them by giving them numbers as codenames to keep at a safe distance, he was really giving them a whole new set of shackles for them to fight against.

And suddenly, all that was undone by Seven in the midst of a couple of hours.

It was a couple of weeks after the completion of their mission in Turgistan and Blaine had finally gotten himself settled in the camp out in the middle of the Californian desert that he now called home when he approached Billy for the real first time.

He wasn't always the easiest guy to find, with her penchant for going on day trips across the desert on one of the dirtbikes or hanging out at one of his perches around the base that gave Blaine vertigo just _thinking_ about reaching without any equipment. But thankfully, when he knocked politely on his trailer door, someone answered. 

Billy opened the door, bleary-eyed and bed-headed, blinking at the sudden bright sunlight as he scratched at his bare chest. Blaine spared a moment to examine Billy's torso, fit and muscular, sure, but scattered with innumerable scars and dotted in with dark bruises. His hands were calloused and scabbed over and red-raw from constant rough use. "Uh," he blinked. He hadn't been expecting visitors, not with most of the rest of the team gone. "You right? Can I help you?

"Hey," Blaine greeted. When it became a parent that there would be no small talk, he cleared his throat and scuffed his feet in the sand. "Walk with me?"

Billy watched him for a few moments, blinking dumbly in the afternoon light. He hadn't expected to be woken up by Blaine on his doorstep and he wasn't quite sure what to do about it. "Sure," he said, reaching across to where a jacket lay and plucked it from the back of the chair. "Whatever."

He joined Blaine on the sand and followed him across the base in silence until he stopped in the shade of the empty trailer, one that nobody had gone in for a month and that Billy couldn't even stand to look at, and they stood there in awkward silence.

Instead of broaching the subject, Billy just stood there and waited until he could wait no longer, "Uh," he fidgeted with the zipper of his jacket. "What's up?"

"I've just been wondering about the dude who was on the team before me," Blaine said easily like he was discussing the weather. "I don't know anything about him other than his number, and I feel like I should learn, out of respect. Amelia said that you were probably the best person to ask about that. Apparently you knew him the best."

"I mean, not really," Billy shrugged, caught off guard. "I knew as much about him as the others did. His name was Six, he told stupid jokes, never shut up and he liked his cars."

"That all, huh? One really doesn't know how to lead a team," Blaine was shaking his head. "How did you say goodbye?"

"We didn't," Billy looked away, into the hot afternoon sun. "We dumped his body into the ocean."

"Damn," Blaine whistled. "That's harsh."

"Yeah, well," Billy crossed his arms over his chest. "It's not like we had much of a choice."

He was keenly aware of Blaine watching him but was resolutely determined not to look over. "How did he die?"

Pursing his lips, Billy scuffed his shoes against the sand, kicking up a cloud of dust that floated into the air before it dissipated. He had seen it, seen the blood and the metal and the shocked looks on everyone's faces, but he still had no idea what had happened. "Not too sure, really," Billy admitted. "I wasn't there when it happened. I was waiting with Javier in the other car, at the pick-up zone. But from what I understand, during the car chase in Florence, he misjudged a sharp turn or the traction on the roads or the speed he was going or something, because all of a sudden they had driven right into the back of a parked truck and a piece of metal was impaled straight through his chest. Next thing they knew, he was dead."

Blaine was silent as he thought over the new information, no sounds other than the distant popping from the others doing target practice somewhere else in the desert. "Well, he died doing what he loved, I suppose," Blaine said eventually. "Are we all going to have our bodies dumped in the sea when we die?"

"Not me," Billy said, earning a curious look from Blaine. "Javier promised me that they would throw my body out of a plane when I bite the bullet."

The chuckle he earned from Blaine was one that filled him with selfish pride, and he hid his expression by smiling down at his shoes. "Did you and Six have a lot in common? You sound like the two of you got along pretty well."

"I mean, as well as any of the others," Billy shrugged. "We both had different talents and uses to the team but... I don't know. He was fun to be around and a great guy to get to know. We both liked the thrill of what we did, the danger, the possibility that one wrong move would be the end of us. He always made me laugh, even when it was frowned on. Took my mind off od how crazy our lives had become. I would have liked to get a drink with him when all of this was over."

"Ah," Blaine said, understandingly and Billy could hear the smile in his voice. "So the two of you were friends, then?"

Honestly, Billy didn't know what to say to that, hadn't considered that possibility, but when Blaine said it, it felt right, like a missing puzzle piece fitted snugly in his chest. "I've never really had those before. Friends. Just people I used to run with," he said. "But yeah, I guess we were."

"Glad to hear it. It sounds like those are hard to come by in our line of work," Blaine said, not unkindly, "No wonder you didn't like me when One first brought me in. I'm glad you just didn't hate me for the sake of it."

"I never hated you," Billy scoffed. "It just felt too soon, like you were replacing Six and the others were trying to move on already, and I wasn't happy about it. A week after he died, sure, but a few days? Everything was just moving too fast. I thought it was unfair to him to recruit a new member a few days after he died."

But Blaine was smiling. "No hard feelings then?"

"Nah, no way," Billy snorted. "If I hate you, you'll know it. I'll make sure you know it."

Rolling his eyes affectionately, Blaine elbowed Billy in the side. "I guess I'll keep that advice in mind," Growing sombre, he said, "Thanks for that, Billy. You knew a lot more than I thought you did, and I really appreciate you taking the time to tell me about him. I know how hard it is."

"No worries," Billy said, trying to dodge the subject. "I'm just sorry I couldn't give you any more information. I really don't know jack other than what we saw while he was a Ghost, which wasn't long at all. I wish I knew more."

"I think he'll be happy to know that he has someone like you to remember him even after death, wherever he is," Blaine smiled, and Billy felt his toes go numb at the thought that maybe remembering that Six liked fast cars and danger was enough to mourn him. "Anyway, I'll leave you to it. Thanks again."

And he did, turning around with his hands in his pockets and walking away from Billy, leaving his footprints in the sand. Billy watched him before he was far enough away before he spun slowly and stared long and hard at Six's untouched trailer, the last thing that anybody had of him, and considered breaking it and taking some of his jewellery for himself, one of his necklaces hanging from his mirror, or a ring or a bracelet on his nightstand. Maybe one of the tools he cherished that he brought for fixing specific cars. Maybe he could take one of the potted plants, and if they weren't dead yet, he could nurse it back to health and call it Six in his honour, just so he had something alive to remember his friend by. He could take care of a plant, right?

Six was dead, and Billy missed him like crazy, but maybe he didn't have to know his name to call him a brother. 


End file.
